


Accio Sleep: The Wizard's Guide To Battling Insomnia

by floralandfading



Series: Snapetober 2020 [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Anxiety, Developing Friendships, Gen, Insomnia, Overthinking, Pre-Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Snapetober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 05:14:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26760025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/floralandfading/pseuds/floralandfading
Summary: Snapetober 2020: Day OneInsomniaSeverus can't sleep, it's as simple as that.Takes place during his first year of being a professor.October 1981, to be exact.
Series: Snapetober 2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1949740
Comments: 2
Kudos: 33
Collections: Snapetober





	Accio Sleep: The Wizard's Guide To Battling Insomnia

The pages of his book rustled softly. 

He wasn’t really reading, not in the way he usually did. He wasn’t paying careful attention to the words printed on parchment, wasn’t getting lost in the miniature infinities as the story came to life. He was only skimming, glancing through the text in hopes of tiring his eyes enough that they might finally choose to close.

It had been days since he had last been able to truly sleep, days since he could lay down without feeling his anxieties gnawing at him more than usual. It had been days of carrying this weight, this pit in his stomach.

The fire crackled.

Severus Snape sighed and put the book aside. He stared into the fireplace, watched the flames flicker and dance. He stood up, felt the chill of stone underneath bare feet, and padded into the kitchenette of his quarters.

He didn’t bother with more candlelight and made a cup of tea in the glow of the fireplace. He stared at the milky chamomile as if it held the answers to all the questions he couldn’t dare ask. He stared so long, that when he eventually took a sip, the tea had gone cold. 

He sighed again.

It only took a quick flick of his wand for gentle ribbons of steam to rise from the cup once more. He sipped slowly as he stared blankly at the walls of where he now called home, and willed sleep to come.

Perhaps it was futile.

Perhaps it was what he deserved.

He stared bitterly at the textbook sitting on the kitchen table. It was a different book from the one he had been paging through only moments ago; no, this book he had found in the library two nights before when the restlessness of the last week first began to take its toll. He twirled his wand between absentminded fingers and wondered briefly if Madame Pince would mind too much if he were to report the book as incinerated.

 _Accio Sleep_ ; he scoffed at the title. 

He had tried everything the book suggested and nothing had helped. He was growing frustrated at his inability to do what his body needed. He’d tried laying in the silent darkness of his bedchamber for hours, turning this way and that, but no matter how hard he tried to clear his mind, tried to get comfortable and relax, sleep was determined to evade him. 

_Or maybe you’re determined to evade sleep_ , his mind snarked at him.

He stood up abruptly and grabbed his cloak. Suddenly, he could see it very clearly in his mind - if he were to keep the useless book in his possession any longer, he would destroy it in his sleep-deprived anger. He pinned the black fabric in place, fingers lingering on the silver cloak pin Lucius Malfoy had gifted him when he had first joined...he shook his head. 

He was moving in a new direction now - a direction he should have gone since the beginning of it all, but dwelling on that was pointless and all he could do now was put one foot in front of the other and do what he could.

Right now, that entailed returning this wretched self-help book before he tossed it in the fireplace and got himself banned from the library. 

The castle was silent at night and a part of him found it comforting to wander about without the bustle of students and their inane chatter. He didn’t bother with wandlight - maybe he had been elsewhere the last three years, but the memory of walking these halls for seven was still ingrained in him, and with the dim light of occasional torches, the path from the dungeons to the library was familiar. 

He was only two corridors away when he heard soft footfalls approaching. For a second, his heart stuttered and he looked around for a place to hide before he remembered he was no longer a student attending Hogwarts, but a professor. 

“Who’s there?”

“I-it’s me.” Severus winced at the stutter in his answer. How was he supposed to command respect from students who had once been classmates when he couldn’t even address the stern voice of Professor McGonagall without faltering? 

A wand light turned the corner and approached him, and soon enough, he could make out the scowling face of the deputy headmistress and Gryffindor Head of House. She was still dressed in the same blue robes she had been wearing earlier, but her greying brown hair was coming undone from her usual bun.

“Oh, _Professor_ Snape,” she greeted and he tried not to react to the level of contempt she put into his title, “where are you headed at this hour?”

He could hear the accusation in her tone and frankly, he didn’t blame her. What reason did she have to trust him other than Dumbledore’s word? Still, it irked him deeply and he tried to keep the malice out of his voice as he replied, “The library.”

She arched an eyebrow and looked at the book in his hands. “Ah, having trouble sleeping are we?”

“Quite.”

They stood there for several minutes, neither willing to walk away first. McGonagall was studying him carefully and he wondered what it was she saw. Did she see the exhaustion that lined his face, the fear and guilt that weighed him down? Did she see his mistakes trailing him like ghosts? Or did she see the Death Eater his marked arm would never allow himself to forget he was, the deserving victim to her precious Gryffindor’s past endeavors?

He didn’t deserve her trust, her sympathy, her respect. 

He was a Death Eater, plain and simple.

He had denounced their ways, begged Dumbledore for help and forgiveness, taken up the mantle of double agent and spy, and now kept a foot on either side. He refused to acknowledge it because he knew what he had to do - there was no second choice - but at the end of the day, he had agency. He had both the leader of the Light and Dark thinking him loyal to their cause, could choose which side benefited him most, and McGonagall knew that. 

He wondered if she knew it was his fault.

“Severus?”

He blinked and focused his attention back on her. He would need to work on that; he couldn’t afford to make mistakes like that, not anymore.

“Pardon?”

“You’re the Potions Master, yes?” she asked, still scowling but he swore he could see something gentle in her eyes. “Brew a sleeping draught.”

He tried for a smile, but it felt more like a grimace. “Quite right, Minerva. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll get right on that. How silly of me, to forget the basis of what my job is.” 

A pause. "You don’t want to sleep.”

He didn’t know what it was that possessed him to answer. He _wanted_ to sleep, there was no doubt in his mind of that, but he just _couldn’t._ No matter how dark, how quiet, how still the room, no matter if he tried to tire out his mind, his eyes, his body, sleep would just not come. And despite knowing all that to be true, the word that he spoke so softly into the near empty corridor was a singular, “No.”

“May I ask why?”

He blinked, unsure of her intentions. Her face had lost some of its severity, and the curious gentleness remained in her eyes, but there wasn’t enough to determine what her angle was just yet. He wondered if his unintentional honesty, the sliver of vulnerability, had lessened some of her defenses. 

What had she seen when he had been lost in thought?

“This book is overdue.” he snarked.

A faint smile, the barest pull on the corner of her lips. “How are your classes going?” she asked, rather unexpectedly. “Come, I still have patrol of the castle to do and perhaps the activity will tire you out.” She started to walk away, in the same direction she had come.

He watched her idly, contemplating his options before ultimately deciding to follow. “Classes are fine.” he struggled to get out. In reality, classes felt like a disaster but he didn’t want to say it aloud because that felt like admitting defeat.

“Are they?” Minerva asked, side-eyeing him. Her eyebrow was raised in disbelief and there was a glimmer of amusement mixed with the gentleness. “The students are listening to you, then?”

He sighed. “The first and second years are.”

Minerva smirked and gestured vaguely to the book return slot outside the library. He rid himself of the book and they continued their stroll of the castle.

“A Hogwarts professor at twenty-one.” Minerva mused. “I believe you might be the youngest one we’ve had to date.”

“Yes, well.”

“I’m not surprised the older students are being difficult. They don’t see you as an authority figure, they see you as their equal, Severus. You have to learn how to carry yourself better. Stand up straight, for one.”

He scowled, but did as told. 

“It’s barely been a month and a half of term - you’ll get better at this.” She stopped at the door that would lead them to the Astronomy Tower and looked him over. “Are you warm enough to go up?” she asked and he blanked at the sudden concern for his well-being. He wrapped the long cloak tighter around himself in response; how had he forgotten until this very moment that he had pulled the garment on over a nightshirt? He wasn’t even wearing shoes. How Dumbledore trusted him to lie to the Dark Lord was beyond him; the lack of sleep was turning his brain to soup. 

Minerva’s soft exhale of breath was the closest to a laugh he had heard anyone direct towards him since he’d arrived at the castle. It made something in him ache as the realization hit: she didn’t know it was his fault, that his eagerness to please and mean something, was what forced the Potters into hiding over a year ago.

He wondered now if he could keep that fact from her forever. 

Their conversation remained pleasant and Severus drank up the positive attention that eased the knot his stomach had become ever since he had returned from a Death Eater meeting days ago and reported his findings to Dumbledore. Nothing had really changed, except now the Dark Lord seemed giddy. He refused to think why that was.

For all he hated Sirius Black with every fiber of his being, the one thing he knew to be fact, was that Black would sooner die than give up James and Lily Potter. As long as he was Secret Keeper, they were safe. She was safe. 

Still, sleep did not come easily.

Ever since Lily’s name had fallen from the Dark Lord's lips, time had stopped. He wondered how the world kept turning when he was still frozen in that moment when the Dark Lord had confirmed Harry Potter’s birth and decided he was the prophesied one over the Longbottom boy, who had escaped that fate by only a handful of hours. 

He wondered if maybe he was meant to be a Death Eater. If not for him, they would have never learned the Dark Lord planned to target the Potters. Then again, if not for him...the prophecy may have never been relayed to (and he forced himself to say the name) Voldemort in the first place.

“Try a sleeping draught.” Minerva’s soft voice interrupted his thoughts once more and then she walked away. 

He looked around himself and realized they had returned to the corridor where his personal chambers were located. He surpassed the wards and took off his cloak, letting it fall to the ground as he stared into the fireplace once more.

The flames had died down and only fragile embers remained. 

He cast a tempus charm and sighed as he learned it was past three in the morning. He climbed into bed, fervently hoping the weariness he could feel down to his bones would finally, finally let him sleep. Still, the voice in his head mocked him. 

_You cannot sleep because you are refusing to let it happen_.

He groaned, because as much as he wished to deny it, that blasted voice in his head was right. He wanted to sleep, he wanted to forget existence for as long as the world granted him, but he just couldn’t stop thinking about Voldemort’s sudden giddiness. 

They were safe, he reminded himself.

She was safe. 

He knew how it would all end though, he knew someone had to die. 

There was no use denying the third thing of the night he knew to be absolutely true: the Dark Lord would never stop trying to kill the boy he saw as a threat. If somehow, and oh Merlin, how he hoped with everything within him that this never happened, the Dark Lord learned of the Potter’s whereabouts, he knew Lily Potter would not step aside and let her son be killed. 

He wouldn’t dare ask that of her.

If the Dark Lord found them, there would be three casualties that night. He couldn’t bear the thought of falling asleep and waking up to a world without Lily Potter. He couldn’t even stomach the idea of waking up to a world where James Potter no longer existed because he knew when that happened, it would have been his doing. 

If turned to when because he knew and accepted what everyone else refused to see: the Dark Lord would not be defeated, not when the bringer of his decimation was barely a toddler. They had already been in hiding for a year; how many more would there be before they decided they would hide no longer and take their chances?

He wondered how much longer he would have to suffer these restless nights before he could finally ease his thoughts enough to fall asleep or if he had to wait for his questions to be answered, for the future to be decided, for someone to die before he could rest. He wondered if he would still be alive to see it all play out or if the deprivation would kill him instead. Maybe the Dark Lord would discover his deceit and kill him first. He idly wondered which ending he preferred. 

He sighed and spent yet another hour for yet another night laying silently in the darkness.

**Author's Note:**

> insomnia? did you mean: overthinking 
> 
> (i took timeline liberties with the potter's going into hiding and all that, but it should all make sense still)
> 
> also! if you found this by receiving an "author posted a new work" notification, im here to tell you that my "and the snakes start to sing" series is under edit! im at chapter 17 of rewrites of this moment and will be moving on to finally writing the next chapter of the sequel once im done! yes, i've been editing for a month now and yes, i've decided to start this monstrosity of a writing challenge, but it is coming!!


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